Archive for October, 2015

Cyber Risk: As businesses, both large and small, throughout all sectors of industry, become more and more reliant on technology to improve service efficiencies and functionalities, cyber risk has become one of the most pressing public topics addressed in corporate boardrooms and by governments across the globe. The corresponding awareness of a business’s susceptibility to a cyber-attack has grown along with a spate of high-profile attacks. Consequently, cyber risk is now an embedded feature of the global risk landscape, not only as a privacy/network liability, which is where much of the publicity has arisen, but also as a peril affecting traditional insurance lines. Therefore, preventative and post-event remediation are gaining importance as shareholders, regulators and rating agencies are increasingly focused on enterprise risk management activities for cyber risks.

Guy Carpenter Examines Shifting Public Sector Risk Landscape: Guy Carpenter announced the release of its Public Sector Risk Report, Partnerships: The Way to Public Sector Risk Financing, which examines the shifting economic and risk landscapes that are driving public sector entities to consider new approaches to risk financing.

Stochastic-based BCAR: Do You Understand Your “Capital-print”?: Technology and innovation continue to change the world around us, creating both opportunities and new challenges for the (re)insurance industry. Advances in risk quantification such as predictive analytics and capital modeling, to name a few, are changing the way we underwrite, price and manage risk. Similarly, technology is allowing A.M. Best (Best’s) to advance the analytics of risk supporting its assessment of balance sheet strength. Taking advantage of stochastic modeling technology, the evaluation of risk within Best’s capital model is undergoing a fairly substantial overhaul to broaden the lens used to analyze risk relative to capital.

Guy Carpenter Examines U.S. Wildfire Risk: Guy Carpenter released a new briefing that assesses wildfire risk in the United States. The briefing, U.S. Wildfire: An Ever Present Hazard, provides insight into the ongoing threat of wildfires in the U.S. as well as risk mitigation strategies and portfolio modeling for this peril.

Increasing Confidence and Transparency in Your Catastrophe Risk Decisions:Could you afford to find that the portfolio you just acquired in North Carolina is more exposed to hurricane than previously assumed? What if next year’s Category 2 hurricane caused a loss in excess of 15 percent of your policyholders’ surplus? How will the changes in the U.S. Geological Survey National Seismic Hazard Maps impact your exposure to earthquake risk in the central and eastern United States?

The picture for small to medium-sized enterprises or SMEs in the United Kingdom (see figure below) is broadly consistent with that for larger firms, but for this segment of companies, (re)insurers see a higher incidence of cyber crime. For example, a small broker was targeted by a phishing scam, where an e-mail containing a link to malicious software was sent to the financial controller within the business. The controller was tricked into installing the software onto his personal computer, and this software was used to steal banking credentials. The cyber criminals were subsequently able to complete electronic wire transfers to the total of GBP100,000 over the following 10 days.

Guy Carpenter announced the release of its Public Sector Risk Report, Partnerships: The Way to Public Sector RiskFinancing, which examines the shifting economic and risk landscapes that are driving public sector entities to consider new approaches to risk financing.

As businesses, both large and small, throughout all sectors of industry, become more and more reliant on technology to improve service efficiencies and functionalities, cyber risk has become one of the most pressing public topics addressed in corporate boardrooms and by governments across the globe. The corresponding awareness of a business’s susceptibility to a cyber-attack has grown along with a spate of high-profile attacks. Consequently, cyber risk is now an embedded feature of the global risk landscape, not only as a privacy/network liability, which is where much of the publicity has arisen, but also as a peril affecting traditional insurance lines. Therefore, preventative and post-event remediation are gaining importance as shareholders, regulators and rating agencies are increasingly focused on enterprise risk management activities for cyber risks.

Over the past few years, the capital markets have become increasingly involved in (re)insurance risk. The capital providers have participated in sidecars, catastrophe bonds and more recently in hedge fund-backed reinsurance companies and collateralized reinsurance vehicles. They also have considerable appetite for subordinated debt as they strive for additional yield in today’s low interest rate environment. The attractiveness of (re)insurance market risk to the capital markets is clear. They obtain higher yields and the opportunity for diversification into risks that are not completely correlated with financial market risk. The way capital markets access (re)insurance risk is either through investing via specialists funds or setting up their own in-house teams to better understand and analyze (re)insurance risk.

Hurricane Patricia made landfall on the Pacific Coast of Mexico as a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Patricia was a compact storm, and made landfall in an area of relatively low population density. Reported impacts in the immediate landfall area are severe. However, the track and compact nature of Patricia appears to have spared Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo and Guadalajara from the most severe impacts, according to media reports.

Guy Carpenter today released a new briefing that assesses wildfire risk in the United States. The briefing,U.S. Wildfire: An Ever Present Hazard, provides insight into the ongoing threat of wildfires in the U.S. as well as risk mitigation strategies and portfolio modeling for this peril.

Technology and innovation continue to change the world around us, creating both opportunities and new challenges for the (re)insurance industry. Advances in risk quantification such as predictive analytics and capital modeling, to name a few, are changing the way we underwrite, price and manage risk. Similarly, technology is allowing A.M. Best (Best’s) to advance the analytics of risk supporting its assessment of balance sheet strength. Taking advantage of stochastic modeling technology, the evaluation of risk within Best’s capital model is undergoing a fairly substantial overhaul to broaden the lens used to analyze risk relative to capital. The technology allows efficient production of multiple capital metrics adjusted for a range of risk levels rather than risk represented by just one data point, providing deeper insights into balance sheet strength, risk profile and risk appetite. The benefit of this overhaul will be a rating that provides greater differentiation among companies, a more informed dialogue around capital versus risk and a more concise measure of “excess” or “deficient” capital. This new lens on capital will significantly influence the way (re)insurers view, measure, communicate and possibly even manage risk.

Guy Carpenter today announced the release of GC AdvantagePoint®, a pioneering portfolio and risk management platform. GC AdvantagePoint is designed to help insurance companies translate vast amounts of data to help leaders set strategy and improve underwriting profitability, understand risk concentration and make more informed risk selection and deliver real-time catastrophe tracking and improved claims management.

Could you afford to find that the portfolio you just acquired in North Carolina is more exposed to hurricane than previously assumed? What if next year’s Category 2 hurricane caused a loss in excess of 15 percent of your policyholders’ surplus? How will the changes in the U.S. Geological Survey National Seismic Hazard Maps impact your exposure to earthquake risk in the central and eastern United States?